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‘We don’t have 50 years to reeval­u­ate our infra­struc­ture, address cli­mate change, or deal with oth­er ‘impos­si­ble’ prob­lems,’ Robert­son asserts. ‘Get­ting 2% improve­ment is no longer accept­able as the right answer. We all need to start real­ly ques­tion­ing the state that we’re in and how to move beyond it at a much more rapid pace than ever before, and this approach of remov­ing arti­fi­cial or unnec­es­sary con­straints is one way to do that. We knew noth­ing about heli­copters, but we were able to do the impos­si­ble. Every­body can become bet­ter prob­lem solvers and glob­al cit­i­zens by inhab­it­ing that state of mind.’

Sein­feld will nurse a sin­gle joke for years, amend­ing, abridg­ing and rework­ing it incre­men­tal­ly, to get the thing just so. “It’s sim­i­lar to cal­lig­ra­phy or samu­rai,” he says. “I want to make crick­et cages. You know those Japan­ese crick­et cages? Tiny, with the doors? That’s it for me: soli­tude and pre­ci­sion, refin­ing a tiny thing for the sake of it.” “Jer­ry Sein­feld Intends to Die Stand­ing Up,” nytimes.com

In 1757, George Wash­ing­ton ran for the Fair­fax Coun­ty seat in the House of Burgess­es. His cam­paign expens­es includ­ed twen­ty-eight gal­lons of rum and fifty gal­lons of rum punch. There was also wine, beer, and cider. This may seem mod­est com­pared to today’s cam­paign spend­ing, but in 1757 Fair­fax Coun­ty, Vir­ginia, had only 391 vot­ers.
Mark Kurlan­sky, from Cod: A Biog­ra­phy of the Fish That Changed the World

Mr. New­man makes his own sal­ad dress­ing at home, too, though he
occa­sion­al­ly reach­es for the stuff that start­ed the Newman’s Own empire.
To date, the food com­pa­ny has gen­er­at­ed $220 mil­lion in char­i­ta­ble
dona­tions and has expand­ed to include pop­corn and a line of fruit drinks
and sal­sas, which he some­times buys in jars at the gro­cery store. While
the stunned check­er grap­ples with the fact that Paul New­man is buy­ing
Newman’s Own sal­sa, he gets a kick out of say­ing, “It must be real­ly good
if I’m pay­ing retail for it.”“He’s got the sal­ad cov­ered. Can he serve you din­ner?,” The New York Times, Sep­tem­ber 27, 2006